Celebrity
by secooper87
Summary: In LA, Angel attempts to save Elizabeth.


Author's Note: Wow, this story is posted at exactly the right time in my life. "Celebrity"... very aptly named, considering how many celebrities I've just met.

I am very touched by Isabel Allende, who told me that I should keep on writing and who actually seemed impressed when she discovered I had a following online (although I told her I'm not very good). I think maybe I can really do this, and be the best that I can be.

My cousin Clara was also at the White House with me. (I began this entire crossover series for her.) She was also very encouraging, and told me that she liked how much I thought through my stories before I wrote them... which I really appreciate.

(I sometimes bounce ideas off of her. This time she said, "No, don't tell me more! I want to read it when you're done writing it!")

Anyways, I got to meet Meryl Streep and Stevie Wonder, who were amazing. Along with many other incredible people, whom I won't name because there are just so many. And they are all so wonderful, and very inspirational to everyone in the United States. Hurray!

Now that I'm done fan-girling, time to get on with the fiction!

Here's "Celebrity".

The story was inspired by my rereading Elizabeth and thinking that it's interesting how Elizabeth acts around Angel. He does seem to really have an effect on her. I wanted to show their relationship in a story that takes place, now, and I wanted to continue my Elizabeth story-arc.

Enjoy!

* * *

Angel had heard what happened in Sunnydale, of course. Dawn had told him about the portal and Buffy and everything, via phone, along with the urgent insistence that, "We're coming to stop Elizabeth. Just wait for us!"

But, of course, Angel knew that Dawn couldn't stop Elizabeth.

Only one person had ever managed to calm Elizabeth's fits of madness, before.

Angel.

He just needed to find her.

* * *

Elizabeth grinned to herself, as she disabled the last alarm. Then, carefully, removed the artifact from its museum casing.

Holding it in her hands.

"And they thought you were just some fancy shmancy trinket!" Elizabeth muttered to herself. Pinging it, to feel the power emanating from the small charm. "Those idiot humans deserve everything that's coming to them."

"You sure about that?"

Elizabeth spun around, at the sound of the voice. Stared, for a second, her hands dropping down to her sides.

As she came face-to-face with Angel.

"You're not like this," Angel said, walking towards her. "Not really. Someone put something inside your head, to twist your thoughts. You're not a killer."

Elizabeth thrust the charm behind her back, so he couldn't grab it from her.

Her mouth moving up and down, but unable to speak.

"What happened?" Angel asked her. Putting hands on her arms. "You can tell me."

Elizabeth faltered, again.

Then threw her arms around him, tears springing into her eyes. "It was so dark!" she whispered. "So many years, all alone!"

Angel swallowed, hard.

Reminding himself that this wasn't Buffy hugging him.

He reached around her, and managed to disentangle the little charm from her hands.

"They locked me up as a murderer, Angel," Elizabeth continued, looking at him through tear-filled eyes. "I just needed to get away! You have to understand that!"

"So you killed Buffy," Angel said. Couldn't manage to keep some of the coldness out of his voice. "And came to this timeline to do… what?" He examined the charm he'd taken from her. "A hell-summoner."

Elizabeth stepped away from him.

Suddenly looking lost and confused.

"It's not me," Elizabeth said. Almost pleaded. "Angel, you know it's not me! There's something inside me, eating me up from the inside! It's so strong; I can't fight it anymore."

Angel tucked the charm away.

As the night watchman to the museum finally sussed something was wrong, and alarms blared across the floor.

"Let's go somewhere we can talk," Angel proposed. Turned, her hand in his, as they ran. "Somewhere quieter."

* * *

She sat before his desk, at Angel Investigations, her head bent and her hair casting long shadows across her face.

"You don't know what it's like!" Elizabeth said. "I want to be good! I want to be the person I was! But there's this horrible, evil thing inside of me, and it won't let me—"

"I do know," Angel reminded her.

Elizabeth paused.

Looked up at him.

"An evil savagery taking you over," Angel said, "making you do terrible things to people you care about. I didn't have a soul to fight that, Elizabeth. You do."

Elizabeth shuddered.

Glancing around herself, uneasily.

"But it's not just evil," Elizabeth breathed. "It's… amazing. Brilliant! If you could just see the world the way it lets me see! All those little threads and possibilities, coming together."

Angel nodded, solemnly.

Heard her out, the way he always had, back in the old days.

"We're all riding a wave of time, Angel," Elizabeth said, snapping her eyes back to him. "I can see the way it wraps around us and pulls at every one of us — and we pull at it, too. A beautiful ballet of give and take, so dynamic and primal, yet so controlled and delicate, too!"

"But does that make up," Angel asked her, "for the evil that makes you hurt your family and friends?"

Elizabeth didn't answer.

"You have a sister, in this timeline," Angel said. "You have a daughter. Don't you care about them?"

"A… sister," Elizabeth repeated. Her voice so far away.

"I can't say what happened to Buffy was right," said Angel. He had to pause, after he said it, straining to hold back the bitter tidal wave of anger and pain he felt over that. But… no. Get through to Elizabeth, first. Before she continued this madness. "But you're here, now. And she's gone. Whatever happened in your timeline, you've got a second chance."

Elizabeth didn't answer this.

Her hands were shaking.

"I… never intended to kill the other-me," she said, at last. Very quietly. "She was supposed to survive. Just… stuck in my timeline. A switcheroo."

Angel tried to answer this. But the words stuck in his throat.

His pain still too raw.

Elizabeth got up from the desk. Her eyes glued to the floor, as she began to pace. Thinking this all through. "A second chance," she said, to herself. "A chance to start again. Save the world, again! With a sister and a daughter and a family! A chance to be… Buffy… again."

She paused, in the middle of the office.

A small smile on her face.

"A chance… to be _me_," she whispered. "The real me."

"Yes," Angel said.

Elizabeth looked up at him.

Looking almost as she had, back before she'd gone insane. Back when she'd visited him as the Doctor's companion, letting him be her confidante.

"Yes," Elizabeth decided. "I'm going to be Buffy, again." She stepped towards him, her face bending kindly into a smile. "With your help."

* * *

Dawn was wary, when she saw Elizabeth, again.

Dawn's friend — Ace, she called herself — was furious with Angel. Practically shoved her way into office, and slammed her hands down on his desk.

"She's using you!" Ace shouted. Pointed back at the other room, where Elizabeth was apologizing to Dawn. "I saw that creep do it over and over again, with the Professor! She can't change; she's evil!"

"She used to be Buffy," Angel replied, as calmly as he could. "If that Crystallizer worked the way Dawn said it did… maybe it inserted enough Buffy back into her to make her come to her senses."

"She tried to kill Buffy's daughter!" Ace cried.

Angel couldn't deny that Elizabeth was insane. Couldn't deny that he had his own set of things that he wanted to scream at her for. But he knew Elizabeth better than anyone. And he knew screaming at her wouldn't help.

"I can calm her madness," said Angel. "I always could. Even when she was traveling with the Doctor."

Ace glared at him. Hard.

"I helped Faith; I can help Elizabeth," Angel said. "Trust me — I understand evil impulses trying to take you over. After a little time with me, Elizabeth will be back to saving the world, again."

Ace turned away, hands under the straps of her rucksack.

"Last world she was on," Ace said, "she destroyed." Slammed open the door of Angel's office. "Remember that."

And yanked Dawn away from Elizabeth.

* * *

"They don't trust me," Elizabeth said to Angel, in a small voice. As they went out, the next evening, to track down the source of a series of mystical emissions, generated from somewhere around LA.

"You hurt Dawn's sister," Angel said. "They have a right not to."

"Not me," Elizabeth insisted. "Xander! He set the bomb."

"Xander," Angel repeated.

"Yes, Xander!" Elizabeth insisted. "I did nothing wrong, Angel! You have to believe that! I just wanted to escape! I needed to get out of there, before the madness consumed me."

Angel didn't say anything to her.

Feeling all his grief over Buffy rising up inside himself.

"You believe me, don't you, Angel?" Elizabeth asked. Hesitantly. "You think I'm still Buffy, somewhere deep down inside — like I used to be?"

He had to.

Couldn't stand to lose her again.

"Yes," Angel said. "I know you are."

* * *

Whatever madness had consumed Elizabeth, it had changed her mind in other ways, too. Angel could see that.

She'd always been smart. Always been good at technology, and quick on the uptake.

But now… she'd become a genius.

"Psychic emissions, along an altered wavelength," Elizabeth muttered, cobbling together a device. She grinned, as the lights on it flashed. "But if we find the exact wavelength where all the frequencies cancel out, I can invert the cancellation frequency and use that inversion ratio to discover the distance to the source, as indicated by the Doppler effect!"

Doppler effect… cancellation frequency…

Yes, she was a genius. Even more than she'd been, before.

Elizabeth turned and raced off, into the night. "Got it!" Elizabeth cried. Blond hair flying out around her, with every step. "This way, Angel!"

* * *

They arrived in the middle of a warehouse, with tall, large windows at the top.

And a complex set of machinery and charms laid out, carefully, in the middle of the room. Mirrors and lenses surrounding the outside.

"Such an intricate and complex meshing of the mystical and the scientific," Angel said, stepping close enough that he could get a good look at it. He could recognize some of the charms from the destroyed Wolfram and Hart archives. "Who could have…?"

The door to the warehouse slammed shut.

A bit of machinery whirring into life, all of a sudden. Throwing Angel back against an invisible wall, in the center of the warehouse.

"Who do you think?" Elizabeth asked, her voice now cold and cruel.

Angel got up.

Tried to step forward, but found himself trapped in a circular force field. "Elizabeth…?"

"Don't go all with the slack-jawed dribbling on me," Elizabeth snapped. Stepped over to the machinery, taking out the hell-summoning amulet she'd stolen back from him, earlier. And slotting it into place. "Didn't remember you being so gullible, in the past, Angel. But you've served your purpose."

"What purpose?" Angel demanded. Realizing, with irritation, that she, herself, must have built all this. He gestured around him, his voice a growl. "What does all this do?"

Elizabeth looked back over her shoulder at him. "Those psychic emanations we were following," said Elizabeth. "They were trying to find Buffy." With a proud smile on her face. "But with your blind faith in me… you convinced them I _was_ Buffy. So now… they want me. And I can use them."

Angel didn't know what to say to this.

"You're as predictable as that stupid daughter of mine," said Elizabeth, returning to her machinery. "I tell you what you want to hear. And you lap it up. As if I'd want to go back to being what I was, before!"

But she still wouldn't look him in the eye.

And Angel had the feeling he knew why.

"But it _wasn't_ all an act, was it?" Angel said. "I know you better than that. You saw you had another chance… and you were considering taking it."

There was just a moment's hesitation in Elizabeth's movements.

"I'm here, now," Angel told her. "You don't have to do this alone. We can work on this, together."

A long pause.

Then Elizabeth turned on him. Her face looking dark and weary.

"You're a dangerous guy to have around, Angel," Elizabeth said. She reached out a hand, and laid it on the force-field surrounding him. Tracing it with her fingertips, as she paced around his cage, slowly. "I've heard this garbage a thousand times before. UNIT, Willow, Xander…" she looked at him, curiously. "But when _you_ say it — it's different. Like I almost want to believe you're right and…"

She paused.

Then shook her head.

"But I'm better like this," Elizabeth said. Stepped right in front of him. Laying her palm flat against the force-field. "And if you're gonna try to butt in and get the old-me back, then you have to die. Slowly. And in agony."

Angel looked around himself. At the ebbing of night, through the windows of the warehouse. The clouds lightening, steadily, illuminating the mirrors and lenses around him.

He realized what she intended to do.

Jumped to his feet. Rushed the force-field, with all his strength. Trying to break through it.

No luck.

Elizabeth turned from him. "Goodbye, Angel," she said, heading out the door. "It's been fun. But it's all over, now. LA's going back to hell, and I'm getting everything I ever wanted."

"Elizabeth!" Angel shouted.

"And if you think your friends will show up and break that force-field, guess again," said Elizabeth. "It'll take a lot more finesse than Ace's explosives to hit the right spot on this machinery. Anything else… and you'll be dead in the blink of an eye."

"Elizabeth!"

But she'd already slipped out the door.

And locked it, behind her.

* * *

It wasn't immediate.

Elizabeth had been too clever for that.

As the sun rose, the lenses and mirrors slowly filtered the light through to Angel, bit by bit. Making him feel like he was boiling alive in his own skin, but unable to actually catch fire and die.

He stripped off his shirt, tried to use it to shield him from the rays. But they were bouncing all around him, in a circle. And he couldn't deflect them all.

He sunk down to his knees, feeling himself too overwhelmed by the sunshine to stand, anymore.

Someone would rescue him. Someone from Angel Investigations would notice he was missing, and track him down to here! Had to!

But as the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, and Angel grew weaker and weaker… he began to realize… no one was.

Elizabeth had covered her tracks too well.

He was as good as dead.

He curled up, slumped against the floor. Eyes closed, overcome with pain, when…

"See? I told you any good celebrity barbecue would be somewhere hidden. And I knew I smelled something cooking in…!" came a brass English-accented voice, from the far side of the warehouse, behind Angel. Then a gasp. "Oh, blooming heck!"

He only just had the energy to turn his head. And make out a red-headed blur racing through the back door, then sprinting towards the machinery around him.

"Donna!" came a man's voice, as he poked his head in through the door. "Sweetheart. Are you sure you want to be breaking and entering just so you can sneak into a celebrity…?"

He stopped, as his eyes fell on Angel.

"What…?" the man asked, suddenly alarmed.

Donna began to thwack at the machinery, viciously, with her purse. "Don't just stand there, Shaun!" Donna snapped, as the whole thing sparked and sizzled around them. "Get over here and give me a hand!"

Angel felt the man, Shaun, walk straight through the now deactivated force-field and grab him up by the arms. Hauling him out of the sunlight, and back into the shade of the warehouse.

Angel's vision still bleary. As he remembered Elizabeth's words, about how difficult it'd be to disable that force-field, and wondered how… this 'Donna' had managed to figure out how to release him.

But he couldn't think very hard. Not when he was this weak.

"We've got to get him to hospital, Donna," said Shaun. "Whoever this is, he's not doing well." Flipped out his cell phone. "What's the equivalent of 999 in America?"

"No," Angel wheezed. Holding out a hand. "No… hospitals. No sunlight! Just… give me… time."

Donna came over, her face in a deep frown. Examined him carefully, with a kind of far-off look — as if trying to grab a memory just out of reach.

Then she gave an elaborate sigh.

And smacked Angel up the side of the head. "Should have known!" Donna shouted. "Blooming method actor!"

Shaun stared at her. "What do you mean…?"

"What are you, some actor from those Twilight movies?" Donna demanded of Angel. Placing hands on hips. "What was this? Rehearsal? Gettin' into character?" She smacked him, again. "And you made us think you were dying! You've got some nerve, sunshine!"

"Donna!" Shaun cried. "I don't think he's an actor. I think he's really hurt."

Donna spun on Shaun. "Of course he's an actor!" Donna said. Pointing to Angel. "I recognize him. Like I've seen him somewhere before." She crossed her arms. "And since I don't know any Americans, that means he must be an actor. Some celebrity dumbo scaring us half to death!"

Shaun hesitated again.

But Donna was already grabbing him by the arm and hauling him out of the warehouse. "We're going to find some celebrities that aren't bloomin' insane. Allons-y, Shaun! Let's get movin'!"

Angel was left behind, in the warehouse.

Not sure… what had just happened.

* * *

"Just because you recognize someone doesn't make them a celebrity," Shaun pointed out to Donna. "What if that was someone you met on your travels? You don't remember what you did or where you went, during that whole time."

"And you think I got that memory-wiping strain of African Flu, while wandering through America?" Donna teased him. She patted down his hair, and kissed his cheek. "Next thing, you'll be telling me I was abducted by aliens!"

Shaun grinned at her.

His crazy, brilliant Donna. Who could wander into trouble just by trying to find a secret celebrity barbecue, and get some autographs.

"Back to business," Donna decided, her eyes intense and scanning the crowds of people nearby. As they stepped onto a busy street. "This is LA, right? And that means… there are celebrities all over the place. Hopefully ones who _aren't_ pretending to be bloomin' vampires!"

Shaun chuckled. "I don't think you're just going to pick out a celebrity at random, off the street, Donna. They're probably…"

He was cut off, as Donna thrust herself past him. "Her!" Donna shouted, pointing at a woman with long brown hair and a 1980's bomber jacket who was running down the street. "I recognize her!" Began sprinting after the woman. "Celebrity! Has to be!"

Shaun sighed. Then began sprinting, himself. "Donna…"


End file.
